This story was originally reported by Grace Panetta of The 19th. Meet Grace and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

BATH, Maine — Election after election, Republican Sen. Susan Collins has defied national political winds to return to office, representing a state that has backed Democrats in every presidential contest since 1992. But her Democratic opponent, Troy Jackson, is betting that her eight-year-old vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court’s subsequent overturning of federal abortion rights will persuade voters to sweep her out of office. 

Collins, seeking a sixth term, became the last Republican standing in a blue state by cultivating a moderate image, including supporting abortion rights, and leveraging her expertise and seniority to bring federal dollars back to Maine.

“To be effective in the Senate, you need knowledge, experience, seniority and relationships,” she said Tuesday in her first debate against Jackson, the former Maine Senate president. “That combination has allowed me to pass bipartisan legislation.”

But Collins, 73, now faces her toughest race yet, thanks to President Donald Trump’s poor approval ratings and the impact of his administration’s policies on the state. Though even with the impact of tariffs raising prices and the unpopularity of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda, Maine doesn’t seem to be an easy target for Democrats. Polls show a razor-thin margin between Collins and Jackson, who, according to some surveys, is running a closer race than Democratic Senate candidates in redder states like Texas, Ohio and Alaska. For Jackson to win, the Democratic women who have split tickets to vote for Collins before need to stick with their party — and Democrats think her vote for Kavanaugh might help sway them in the other direction.

A dozen Maine Democratic voters told The 19th they’re hopeful about Jackson’s chances, but they’re not counting Collins out in a state with a strong independent streak and parochial political culture where local issues take precedence over the hyper-polarized national climate.  

“I’m nervous,” said Faith Woodland, a voter who attended a town hall event focused on abortion that Jackson’s campaign held in the seaside town of Bath. “We’re all hoping Troy wins,” she added, but she fears that Collins “may be another Teflon candidate.” 

Concerns over the cost of living and voter discontent with Trump’s second term are the top issues in the race. Jackson, a former logger with deep ties to the labor movement, is running as a champion for working people  — at campaign events, staffers wear T-shirts with phrases like “Solidarity” and “Kicking Ass for the Working Class.” 

Jackson is also making abortion central to his case against Collins, casting her 2018 vote to confirm Kavanaugh, who sided with the majority to overturn Roe, as a major error in judgment that undercuts her image as a measured decision-maker. He argues that it shows Mainers can’t trust her to protect their rights, even though the procedure remains protected in Maine. 

Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.

“She said that she doesn’t regret that vote. Well, most everyone I know does,” Jackson, wearing a bright pink T-shirt that read “I Stand With Planned Parenthood” over his button-down, said at the event on Monday alongside Nicole Clegg, a vice president at Planned Parenthood New England. 

“I mean, she thinks we’re stupid, that’s really what it comes down to,” he said later. “She thinks that we don’t understand the process, that she didn’t know what he was going to do. I mean, everyone in the country knew exactly what he was going to do. It’s not us that’s stupid, it’s her.” 

(At the end of the event, he clarified that he meant that Collins “would have been stupid” if she thought people didn’t know what would happen with Kavanaugh, not that she is stupid.)  

And their first debate on Tuesday fell on the eight-year anniversary of Collins’ vote, which she took after she said Kavanaugh assured her he believed Roe v. Wade was settled law. When the candidates were given the opportunity to question each other, Jackson asked her: “What will it take for you to admit you’re ever wrong?” 

Collins noted she voted to confirm more liberal Supreme Court justices who voted against overturning Roe v. Wade. When pressed by the moderator as to whether she thought Kavanaugh lied to her, she said that she didn’t — but that he “should not have said it was settled law.”  

Outside groups like Planned Parenthood Votes are spending and running ads focused on abortion in Maine, which is home to a considerable number of older women who remember life before Roe v. Wade. Kristin Malin, who lives in Georgetown and attended the event Monday, said she recalled the time before unmarried women could access even contraception. For them, defeating Republicans is an imperative. 

“I’m not in love with Troy Jackson,” former state Sen. Margaret Craven, who served in the legislature for over 20 years, told The 19th while participating in a small anti-Trump demonstration in downtown Lewiston on Tuesday. But Collins, she said, “has let women down” and has been “a total failure.” 

Eileen Coyne, a Jackson supporter who was also out protesting, agreed.  “Young women don’t realize what they’re losing,” she said. 

Jackson, who placed third in the Democratic primary for governor this year, didn’t plan on running for Senate. But he became the nominee this summer in a fast-tracked party-run process to replace previous nominee Graham Platner, who galvanized a grassroots movement around his campaign but dropped out of the race after being accused of sexual assault. He denied the allegation. 

The switch from Platner to Jackson caused some consternation among the party’s grassroots base.

Lisa Sabatine, 67, was involved with Platner’s campaign from the outset as a volunteer coordinator and is now organizing and canvassing with another group, People Power Maine. She said Monday that she supports Jackson but has been “struggling” with national Democrats and outside consultants’ involvement in his campaign. When Jackson replaced Platner, she said “I thought we just handed Susan Collins a win.”

Both Jackson and Collins have reputations not as expert orators chasing the political spotlight, but as workhorses focused on getting results. While some have expressed concerns about Jackson’s skill as a retail politician, others argue his down-to-earth approach and authenticity are assets. 

“Maine is a really independent-minded state, and Mainers don’t like being told what to do,” Devon Murphy-Anderson, executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, said Tuesday. “Troy speaks like a Mainer, and he has Maine values, and he fights like a Mainer because he is a Mainer. He is not polished like Washington because he has not spent his career in Washington.”

With decades-long careers in public office, both Jackson and Collins are striking a balance between defending their records and acknowledging that voters think the status quo is broken. Each argues that they’re best positioned to fix it.

“Under Troy Jackson’s failed leadership, Maine is less affordable and education scores have plummeted,” Samantha Cantrell, a spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement Tuesday night. “Mainers already rejected Troy once this year, and they will do it again in November.”

“It’s a very tense time,” said Chris Holden, who said she was “grateful” for Collins’ service in her first two terms in office (Collins initially said she would only serve two terms when she first ran for the Senate in 1996), but believes it’s time for her to move on. She lamented the influence of outside spending in the race, saying, “money talks.” 

Debora Houdek, who lives in Auburn and has been out canvassing and volunteering for Jackson, was also concerned about Democrats’ ground game. 

“I’m starting to get worried,” she said. “We need more people in the streets.”   

All those factors raised the stakes for Jackson’s first debate against Collins, which Democrats agreed he resoundingly won by landing several sharp attacks on Collins and accusing her of not doing enough to stop the most unpopular elements of Trump’s second-term agenda. When Collins noted that she worked to get road salt, essential for Maine winters, removed from the list of Canadian goods subject to tariffs, Jackson quipped back: “We can’t eat road salt.”    

Collins highlighted the legislation she’s gotten passed and the federal funding she secured for projects in Maine from her powerful position leading the Senate Appropriations Committee. 

“It was clear from the beginning that Senator Collins is running to serve Maine, and Troy Jackson thinks he’s running against Donald Trump,” Blake Kernen, a spokesperson for Collins, said in a statement following the debate. 

But Collins spent much of her speaking time on the defensive, disputing the methodology behind statistics Jackson cited, including an analysis concluding that she votes with Trump 96 percent of the time, and untangling the intricacies of Senate procedure to defend her record in the body. 

Maine Senate President Mattie Daughtry, who attended a watch party state Democrats held in downtown Portland, said after Jackson “definitely dominated” and won the debate. “He had Senator Collins on her back foot,” she added. 

“Statistics don’t fill your fuel tank. Statistics don’t make your grocery bill not $200,” Daughtry said. “She’s wrong with her votes 96 percent of the time, and she’s arguing about parliamentary procedure.”

The post As Susan Collins goes for a sixth term, Maine Democrats worry she’s a ‘Teflon candidate’ appeared first on Salon.com.

In mid-September, Chinese scientists announced a breakthrough in extracting hydrogen and fresh water from the ocean with about 15% better energy efficiency than older techniques. Their research, published in Nature Energy on Sept. 15, underscores that China continues to dominate in the renewable energy race, generating so much that the country can’t even use it all. As Reuters reported in August, “China turned away enough clean energy to power Mexico ​for a year in the six months through June as its grids hit their limits.” At the Fortune Leaders Forum in Macau on Sept. 8, Youyuan Huang, executive vice chairman of BTR New Material Group, the world’s top maker of battery anode materials, said “China’s grid is a very strong and stable one . . . but we’ve installed too much green energy.”

Boy, the U.S. could sure use some of that excess juice. Currently, this country is embroiled in a self-inflicted energy crisis, largely a result of President Donald Trump’s war against Iran, that is sending deep ripple effects across the globe as oil prices spike. In the U.S. alone, diesel prices have risen around 70% since before the war began on Feb. 28, hitting a record $6.52 on Sept. 22, and in the last two months, at least 16 trucking companies, both large and small, have been bankrupted. The world’s richest nations are trying to staunch the bleeding, recently vowing to release up to 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil within four months. But on Monday, Amin Nasser, CEO of Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, cautioned that this is little more than a Band-Aid and that long-term supply issues remain. Until the Strait of Hormuz “fully reopens and confidence returns, the crude reality is that pressure at both ends of the barrel will intensify,” Nasser said at the Energy Intelligence Forum in London.

Some “crude reality” would be another nice-to-have for those helming U.S. policy. The rising fury against the war and high energy prices threatens to clobber Republicans in the midterm elections. So the Trump administration is frantically trying to drive down diesel prices, first by floating the idea of banning exports. This tactic, criticized as “unwise” by some oil executives, has been abandoned for now, but at a Monday rally in Nebraska — where Trump also seemed to promote the idea of Iran attacking two California cities — he signed an executive order promoting the use of red-dyed diesel. Normally reserved for agriculture operations, red diesel is exempt from highway fuel taxes, but experts caution that expanding its use probably won’t help much because major fuel suppliers are unlikely to go along with it. For one, the taxes are only deferred, meaning companies could end up paying them later. But red dye, when used, can also gum up tanks and fuel systems. “We do not expect most reputable diesel retailers and fuel marketers to do this,” the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America and the National Association of Truck Stop Owners said in a note to their members, citing “limited upside.”

On Friday, Trump announced his latest bid to reduce prices: buying oil from Russia. Shortly afterward, the Treasury Department issued a temporary license allowing Russian diesel to be supplied to the global market. Though details were scarce, this undermines the president’s own sweeping Russia sanctions law he signed last month. Regardless, it doesn’t look like it will do much to lower prices. “It’s kind of shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic,” Michael Lynch of the Energy Policy Research Foundation, told the Associated Press. “If we get diesel from Russia, basically it means that their existing customers are not going to get it and they’ll have to go somewhere else, and that will keep the price basically where it is now.”

With diminishing options — besides the obvious one of ending the Iran war immediately, which Trump can do whenever he wishes — the administration’s primary strategy is to blame everyone else. On Monday, he repeated claims on social media that Ukraine is most at fault for high oil prices thanks to their continued attacks on Russian oil refineries, and that “What’s driving up gasoline is no longer the Strait of Hormuz.” The president also said the closure of oil refineries in “blue states” is part of the problem. 

Energy Secretary Chris Wright has also spread these claims, appearing Oct. 4 on “Face the Nation” to blame Ukraine and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the latter for closing two refineries. (In fact, Newsom had nothing to do with the refinery closures.) Wright insisted that fuel prices will drop soon, as Trump has been claiming for months now. He also said that Trump was warned before attacking Iran that it might create an energy crisis — “he was well aware of the risk to energy flows that were coming out of the Persian Gulf region” — but the president insisted it would all be worth it to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Wright has been especially busy lately trying to instill a sense of optimism around the energy sector, dismissing climate change as a non-issue while laundering Trump’s vision of “energy dominance.” All of this is remarkably myopic. Half of it is an artificial war against renewable energy projects, including the cancellation of almost $8 billion in Biden-era clean energy grants, and using specious claims about “national security” to cancel offshore wind projects. The other half is accelerating oil, gas and coal extraction while slashing protections for endangered species threatened by drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. But here’s the rub: Neither approach has made fuel cheaper, and it doesn’t seem that will change any time soon.

Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.

There’s little wonder why: Wright founded Liberty Energy in 2011, one of the fossil fuel giants that led that decade’s fracking boom, and he has attacked renewable energy projects almost as enthusiastically as Trump, saying they can never fully meet increasing energy demands. China and other countries have conclusively proved that false, but it’s not an either-or situation. Despite being the world’s No. 1 renewable energy producer, China is also rapidly expanding its coal industry. “The growth of renewable electricity is not incompatible with maintaining, and sometimes developing, fossil-fuel capacity,” science and technology historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz explains in his 2025 book “More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy.” 

In other words, human energy consumption is rising so fast that we’re continuing to grow all energy sectors rather than entirely replacing fossil fuels with renewables. (That’s not great news for the climate, of course.) But only the U.S. is leaning quite so hard into 19th-century fossil fuels instead of 21st-century solutions.

Why would the Trump administration push so hard for retrograde technology? Perhaps it’s time to admit that the president actually has no interest in driving down consumer prices or the cost of living, let alone ending the war, whether it hurts his party’s electoral chances or not. Trump is deeply invested in oil and gas companies, which have enjoyed obscene profits throughout the conflict. As Reuters reported in late September, “The ​five largest Western oil companies — BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies — are expected to report combined third-quarter profits of around $53 billion, according to RBC Capital Markets estimates, up from $48 billion ‌in the second quarter and more than double year-earlier levels.” 

Trump has caught plenty of these profits, with an August report from the Joint Economic Committee finding that the president “owned as much as $45.6 million in oil and gas company stocks in 2025, a portfolio that is now worth as much as $61.1 million given the surge in oil and gas stocks driven by Trump’s war in Iran.”

No wonder Trump continues to hint that the Iran war will heat up again after the midterms: He has a vested interest in keeping it going and inflating gas prices, so maybe it makes sense to call his bluff here. After all, truckers may be dropping more than $1,000 every time they fill up, or losing their jobs entirely, but the ultra-rich aren’t feeling much stress from all this. They are well positioned to buy up bankrupt trucking companies and jack up prices, further consolidating their monopolistic or oligarchic power. It’s the classic “shock doctrine,” in which corporations exploit disaster conditions, created intentionally or not. 

It would be more sensible to follow China’s lead on renewable energy, just as it would probably be smart to retreat on Iran rather than get entrenched in another forever war. But that just wouldn’t generate such spectacular windfall profits for Trump or those in his orbit. The solution is to nail these people to the consequences of their decision. They don’t want to end this crisis, so we must make them.

The post Trump gets richer while gas prices soar appeared first on Salon.com.

This story was originally reported by Jasmine Mithani of The 19th. Meet Jasmine and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Content warning: This story references incidents of sexual assault.

Bernadette Greene-Placentia, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Arizona, shared publicly for the first time that she was raped while fixing campaign signs over the summer. 

Greene-Placentia told her story to the local outlet Phoenix New Times, which published the account on Wednesday. 

She said an attacker knocked her out around 2 a.m. on August 14, a date confirmed by the campaign to ABC News, while she was out fixing her campaign signs to avoid the daytime heat and traffic. When Greene-Placentia came to, she said a man was pulling his penis out of her. She said that another man came over and began touching her, but that he backed off after she fought back. 

Somehow, she made it home. “I just wanted to forget it,” Greene-Placentia told Phoenix New Times. 

Redistricting had impacted the home Greene-Placentia shared with her husband, so she found another place to stay within Arizona’s 8th Congressional District. Her husband and campaign manager told Phoenix New Times that she disappeared for two days after the alleged assault. The only person who saw her those two days was her landlord.

She initially didn’t want to report: “I’d always considered myself a strong person, and so I was embarrassed,” she told a local ABC affiliate in a video interview. But two weeks later she called the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and told them what happened. 

Rape is chronically underreported.  Survivors may not report their assault to law enforcement for any number of reasons, including a fear of retaliation, not believing the police would help and not believing the crime was important enough. Of the rapes that were reported, data from the FBI shows fewer than 1 in 3 rape cases have been cleared since September 2021. 

Greene-Placentia is speaking out now, she said, because “I need to let women know that it’s okay to talk about it.” 

On Wednesday, a campaign spokesperson told The Guardian: “She chose to share her story because she knows many survivors struggle in silence, and she hopes that by speaking about her experience, others will know they are not alone.” 

Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.

“She hopes the focus remains on supporting survivors and making sure people who have experienced sexual violence know they are seen, heard and supported.”

The investigation is ongoing. Greene-Placentia said she has struggled to remember details; scientists have shown how severe trauma can impact memory. 

There isn’t any confirmation of whether Greene-Placentia’s attackers knew who she was or if the violence was tied to the House race. She was wearing a campaign shirt when she was attacked and was repairing campaign signs, but Greene-Placentia told the local ABC News affiliate that there was no way to know, and that it could have been a crime of opportunity. 

The violence may not have been partisan, but gender-based violence is political. Studies have shown that nearly all women lawmakers experience harassment, despite being a smaller portion of representatives, and threats of violence prevent women from running for office. 

Politics isn’t her first foray into a field where women are underrepresented. Greene-Placentia is a long-haul trucker and runs her own business. Her campaign platform includes strengthening and fully funding SNAP, supporting abortion rights and expanding paid family leave. She also talks about affordability and increasing border security. 

Greene-Placentia is challenging the Republican incumbent Abe Hamadeh. Winning is a long shot;  the Cook Political Report rates the district as “Solid Republican.” 

Hamadeh’s campaign provided the following statement to ABC News: “I have read the disturbing story and call upon authorities to investigate these serious allegations thoroughly, including finding all possible camera footage of the time and place in order to prosecute the crime to the fullest extent of the law. No American should become a victim of a crime in their own community.”

If you or a loved one have experienced sexual assault and are in crisis, please call RAINN (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or reach out to the 24-hour chat service at rainn.org. LGBTQ+ people experiencing any type of violence can call the Anti-Violence Project’s hotline at 212-714-1141 Monday through Thursday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern or Friday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern.

The post Arizona House candidate said she was raped while fixing campaign signs appeared first on Salon.com.

An Ugly Hate Campaign Returns

As polls show Republicans doing poorly in safely red states, the party is looking toward blue states in which its candidates might have a chance. One such state is Minnesota, where Senate candidate Michele Tafoya (R), a former sideline reporter for Sunday Night Football, is polling well. And so I can only guess it is with the election in mind that President Trump is trying to stir up some racial tension, going so far as to encouraging Minnesotans to “fight back” against their Somali immigrant neighbors.

The state has been “taken over by Somali Immigrants” he wrote on Truth Social yesterday. “There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State. The people of Minnesota must fight back.”

He want on to attack Governor Tim Walz (D) as “an incompetent thief who doesn’t want to get involved” before concluding “The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back!”

The attacks rest on the same panic about fraud investigations in the state that prompted last winter’s federal invasion of Minneapolis, leaving two American citizens dead. Republicans have returned to those talking points after an 18-year-old American citizen born to Somali immigrant parents was arrested earlier this week after allegedly plotting an attack on the Mall of America with an assault rifle, inspired by ISIS. It’s unclear how realistic his plan was. Tafoya, the Republican Senate candidate, has leaned hard on the details of that arrest, while also describing voter concerns about “crime” and supposed “Somali gangs.”

Elsewhere, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), who represents a red seat northwest of Minneapolis, offered the idea that his constituents were facing “enemy combatants.”

“This is another one that you’re going to hear at the ballot box,” he said on Fox Business. “Democrats […] are not talking about it, they are not offering solutions, and they are not holding these fraudsters or these criminal gangsters — which I would argue are enemy combatants, more than anything — they’re not holding them accountable.”

Trump’s comments are reminiscent of the 2024 smear campaign JD Vance employed against Haitian immigrants in Ohio, seizing on an issue that, as TPM reported at the time, neo-Nazi groups including Blood Tribe and Patriot Front had sought to push to the fore. It’s tempting to predict this rhetoric will backfire in the midterms, but it’s hard to say whether that was the case in 2024: after grotesquely and falsely accusing Haitians of eating pets, Trump and Vance won all seven battleground states and won Ohio by 11 points.

I can imagine, however, that Minnesotans, at this point, are getting tired of this.

Trump Tries Last-Minute Gambit to Pay off Americans

• A series of actions by the Republican-led Congress and the Trump administration have dealt significant blows to health care in America — specifically, to Obamacare and Medicaid which, in turn, support rural hospitals.
• As a solution, the White House has unveiled two schemes to send Americans small checks — one for $90 to Medicare Part B enrollees and the other for $500 to Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace enrollees who do not receive premium assistance.
• That first initiative seriously stretches the law, experts told TPM’s Emine Yücel, describing it to her as a “legally dubious” interpretation of how the executive branch may use the pool of funding it’s tapping into.
• This all became an issue in last night’s debate between Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and her Democratic challenger Troy Jackson. Emine reports:

Tabs

• Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) tore into Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) in last night’s Georgia Senate debate, deploying such lines as, “If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.” Read Layla A. Jones’ recap for TPM here.
• ICE agents shot a man in New York City multiple times Thursday while he was in his car. According to New York officials, a five-year-old child was in the back seat.
• The Trump administration will livestream the killing by firing squad of the Fort Hood shooter, the first U.S. military execution since 1961. Pete Hegseth is super excited about it.

On Wednesday in the Oval Office, Donald Trump made clear that he’s not happy with how his political rivals have treated him and stoutly reserved his right for revenge. “They impeached me twice. I certainly — even to this moment I can do whatever I want, if I want.” Trump said, before claiming that only his respect for the office of the president keeps his behavior in check.  

If this were a sitcom— and it feels like a bad one — we would now hear a laugh track followed by groans.

Clearly Trump has never understood the foundational concepts of American politics. Political ethics, the art of “half a loaf,” the truism that “all politics are local” and the principles of public service over private enrichment are lost on him. Those are just sayings on trophies Trump has minted for himself since he’ll never get the Nobel Peace Prize. 

He certainly doesn’t understand compromise or the importance of local issues. Consider his enthusiastic support for data centers, the only issue currently uniting Americans. He’s too busy feathering his own nest while laughing off any pretense of ethical behavior. While we can certainly criticize Trump for ignoring the foundations of our democracy, the same could also be said of Congress, most state houses and many city councils. And, hey, let’s not talk about the local pool board. That’s where stuff really gets weird. Sometime I’ll tell you about my former neighbor in Gaithersburg who thought “Robert’s Rules of Order” had something to do with sharing spouses. 

Recent polls of likely voters in the midterm elections make it clear that a significant majority are extremely tired of the nonsense promulgated by Trump and others. Yeah, those are just polls and they only offer you a vague snapshot in time. That being said, it isn’t just about the polls. Donald Trump is so scared of what’s coming that he’s limited his campaign activities to shoring up support in the deepest red districts of America while threatening Democrats with hellfire and damnation.

No one could be more delighted than the Democratic National Committee, whose pitch to the electorate consists of three words: “We’re not him!” It’s a simple message, if not exactly an inspiring one, made possible by Trump’s overwhelmingly inept corruption. At least for now, the Republicans have lowered the bar so far under a despotic president that even the dysfunctional Democrats might crawl over it. 

Where I see real hope for change is at the local level. Some of the most promising Democrats have led energetic and engaging campaigns, with more public appearances in front of potential constituents than most Republican incumbents have ever dared to hold. The pitch is reaching disgruntled voters of all stripes, including Latinos, Republican women and independents.  Some of them, like retired Army officer Richard Ojeda, the Democratic nominee in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, and Fred Wellman, another military vet running in Missouri’s 2nd District, have independently and successfully put themselves within striking distance in traditionally red districts. Trump won Wellman’s Missouri district by eight points in 2024, and won Ojeda’s Tar Heel State district by double digits. With more than three weeks to go, both races are statistical dead heats.Wow. It appears that talking to the electorate and not acting like a bully can have positive effects. Who knew?

Meanwhile Trump still preaches his gospel that the economy is in great shape and people are doing better than ever; “I think we’re going to do very well,” he said recently. “We’re letting people know what the Republicans have done, and it’s incredible. And prices are now coming way down. And oil, as soon as the war is over, which will be soon, will be coming way down.”

While his stump speech wears thin, Republican incumbents are also running against a Democratic Party that has already lost twice to Trump, forcing us to confront what might happen if the Republicans win again. In the first two years of the second Trump administration, he has effectively destroyed the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and 10th amendments. With a continuing GOP majority in Congress, the other five are toast as well.

It’s more interesting to consider what happens if the Democrats, despite their best efforts, actually win control of Congress. Can they make substantive changes? Obviously, Trump will veto any bills the Democrats pass. During the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, House Speaker John Boehner famously remarked that the House had passed a plan, and it was up to Barack Obama to sign it. Will the current crop of Democrats be satisfied to offer that response in 2027? 

I doubt it. There’s already talk of impeaching both Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump himself — at least according to Trump. My bet is on Hegseth. At the very least, that would undermine Trump’s control of the military, which he would eagerly wield to suppress the will of the people. It was an outgoing Republican member of Congress, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who proposed impeaching the “secretary of fashion,” and it’s widely believed that more Republicans could be persuaded to vote Hegseth out following a big blue wave. Actually removing him from office would require 67 votes in the Senate, always a tall order. But Hegseth is as popular in Congress as a canker sore on a first date. On Thursday, he revived the medieval notion of holding public executions, always a sign of civility, and after a Democratic takeover of both houses, the remaining Republicans will have their own futures to think about. As Brad Pitt said in “Fight Club,”  it’s about “survival of the fittest, baby.” 

If Hegseth is actually removed, the smart money would have Congress then turning its attention on Trump. Only then, the argument goes, would Trump be weakened enough that it might be possible to impeach and convict him, finally removing him from office. I’d want to whip the votes to make sure you could get a conviction before even starting down that road. But many angry Democrats want to bypass Hegseth and immediately try to impeach the president. Knee-jerk reaction? Thy name is politician.

Of course, it’s also possible the Democrats might opt to do nothing about Trump once they get a majority, which is more or less their national campaign strategy. But with no ability to pass legislation, I suspect they’d focus their energy on investigations, some of which would go nowhere and all of which would further fuel our nation’s bitter divisions. But is there another, better option?

Six weeks before the 2020 election, when Trump’s chances of winning looked bleak, he let us know he’d be willing to sponsor or support an insurrection. He urged us to stop counting the votes. We got the insurrection when we didn’t. So what’s he telling us now? One persistent fear is that he may try to snatch ballot boxes in hotly contested districts and claim victory, while screaming about election fraud. Others are fearful that with the complicity of the Republicans in Congress, he’ll let government funding run out in mid-December and shut down the government again. 

As he says, he’ll take whatever action he wants. That has included moving B-1 bombers from a base in England because of a supposed terror threat from Iran, a nation he claims is on its knees, along with a suggestion that the Iranians might “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego. Not exactly Trump’s finest hour. 

His public pronouncement that he can do whatever he wants to Democratic leaders, combined with implied threats against American cities, proves one more time that this American president is an existential threat to humanity. Anything and everything is transactional to Trump, even the sacrifice of millions of innocent lives, both Democratic and Republican. More horrifying still, his statement was met by extended cheers from his exuberant audience of nearly 6,000 people who showed up in Nebraska on Oct. 5. 

The punchline here is this: That was the second time in a week that Trump played before a very small crowd. It looks better, I suppose, to have a thousand people kept from entering a venue than seating them in a spacious arena he can no longer fill. In Ohio, he played to about 5,000 people in a high school gym and later threatened to jail reporters who pointed out that he hadn’t filled that “arena.” 

Trump has clearly given up on retaining control of the House and pulled out of the U.S. Senate race in North Carolina. This week he has grown increasingly dark in emails to his MAGA contributors. Tuesday, he told his supporters, “One seat slips, then another, and the gavel changes hands like a throat being cut in silence. The other side does not need a landslide. They need the dark to do their work for them. A tired voter. An empty chair. A man who tells himself the night will pass if he stays indoors.”

No one believes Trump wrote that macabre bit of poetry, evocative of a “Halloween in the Heartland” tale of terror. It stinks of a collaboration between Susie Wiles and Stephen Miller.

At the end of this road, if the Democrats seize a majority in both the House and the Senate, Trump will become a Manhattan sewer rat cornered in a dank alley fighting over a rotting slice of pizza. 

Want more sharp takes on politics?
Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only by Amanda Marcotte, also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Government shutdowns, name-calling, blame-spreading, ballot seizures and even a failure to seat the winning Democrats in Congress are all conceivable between the morning of Nov. 4 and the moment the new Congress is sworn in. But I detect a couple of tells that indicate Trump’s threats are empty. First, his notoriously low popularity likely won’t lead to a more successful result than the Jan. 6 insurrection, although the effort could be more dangerous and desperate.

The second tell is that we’re already hearing talk among Republicans about moving beyond Trump. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio will supposedly run for House minority leader and outgoing Speaker Mike Johnson will be shown the door. Jordan has stayed in the shadows since Trump’s return, allowing Johnson to gaslight reporters and the public with his creepy smile. Will Jordan become the new face of the Republicans following Trump’s departure? Will JD Vance, who’s been campaigning in Alaska recently? (I make that suggestion with a straight face.) Then there’s Marco Rubio, the man in the Trump administration who wears all the hats and avoids most of the criticism. They are all jockeying for position in an uncertain future.

The surest sign Trump is faltering is his shrinking crowds — and his desperate efforts to hide that fact.

Trump may stay in office until January of 2029, and he may not. Nature, politics and his unexplained health issues will have a say in that matter.

But as both Republicans and Democrats contemplate a future without him, perhaps even one based on democratic principles, Trump becomes increasingly insignificant while, at the same time, increasingly dangerous. We cannot afford to forget that.

The post What will Trump do after the midterms, with nothing left to lose? appeared first on Salon.com.

This story was originally reported by Mel Leonor Barclay of The 19th. Meet Mel and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

When Shannon Taylor became the top prosecutor in a central Virginia county in 2012, she said she found a system that wasn’t delivering justice in the face of complicated sex trafficking cases: Women were being regularly arrested at local motels, while the men who preyed on them, got them engaged in illicit sexual activities and profited from their bodies often faced no accountability. 

In Michigan, Christina Hines said domestic violence and sexual assault are “so ingrained as part of our society” that she’s lost track of the number of doors she’s knocked on where simply sharing about her work putting abusers behind bars has resonated to the point of tears. “These are things so many people have endured,” the former prosecutor said.  

Taylor and Hines are running for competitive U.S. House seats in Virginia and Michigan, tapping into their experiences prosecuting sex crimes, domestic violence and human trafficking to connect with voters who they say are frustrated about corruption and injustice, from the pervasive nature of abuse against women to the government’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. 

Epstein died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial for federal sex trafficking charges, but the legacy of his alleged abuse remains an ongoing political issue. Survivors of Epstein’s abuse — some of whom are traveling around the country right now demanding transparency and justice — say that they have been failed by the U.S. justice system, from local law enforcement up to the highest levels of government. 

Just weeks out from the midterm elections, voters are facing yet another sex abuse scandal: In New York, a woman known as Jane Doe filed a lawsuit alleging she was gang raped by members of a Cornell University fraternity, and that both the university and local law enforcement botched their handling of the case. 

        

Taylor and Hines are leaning on their records as women prosecutors, telling voters about how they held abusers to account in their own communities, and plan to do the same if elected to Congress. 

Taylor has featured this work in two ads this cycle as she tries to flip Virginia’s 1st Congressional District, a seat held by Republican Rob Wittman. In September, Taylor’s campaign released an ad highlighting her decision to press charges against a Democratic state lawmaker who investigators accused of having sex with an underage clerk. This week, the campaign is out with a second ad featuring Cathy Easter, an advocate against domestic violence and human trafficking who credits Taylor with championing Virginia’s landmark sex trafficking law, which went into effect in 2015 and made it a crime to force someone into prostitution. 

Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Virginia was the last state in the country to enact such a law. Easter said in an interview that Taylor reformed the way Henrico County interacted with women victims of sex crimes and domestic violence, not just going after perpetrators but working closely with local nonprofits to make sure they had ready access to legal help and housing. Henrico’s example influenced other local governments around the state, Easter said. 

“I am very proud of the work that we have done being the model for human trafficking investigation and prosecution — understanding the trauma of what women are going through,” Taylor said. 

Virginia’s 1st Congressional District is considered a bellwether for party control of the U.S. House, according to an analysis by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. 

Wittman, who has served 10 terms in Congress, won the district by 13 points in 2024, outperforming Donald Trump. To win an 11th term, Wittman will have to overcome the president’s high disapproval ratings in the district, which could dampen enthusiasm — and turnout — among Republican voters. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, won this district by two points in 2025, illustrating the potential for a flip. 

Taylor said voters in her district are “terrified” about the rising cost of living, but, she said, “they are equally infuriated with the corruption in D.C.,” and that includes voters who have approached her about the Epstein files. 

“I say to folks, look, the Epstein files is something that is very personal to me,” Taylor said. As a fellow prosecutor who has worked with sex trafficking victims, Taylor said she had a visceral reaction to former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s appearance before the House Judiciary panel. The hearing focused on the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files and was attended by women who survived Epstein’s abuse. 

“The attorney general, the person we’re supposed to be able to rely on, could not even turn around to address these women,” she said. “I found that to be the most offensive act I’ve ever seen, and I tell folks, that infuriates me because we are supposed to do better.” 

Taylor said that the Trump administration has failed in its handling of the Epstein case, and she is criticizing Wittman, her opponent, for not pushing for the release of the Epstein files sooner. Both, she said, have failed to “stand up for those women.” 

Wittman’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. 

        

In Michigan, Hines attended an event with some of the Epstein survivors who are traveling around the country demanding transparency. Hines said she wants them to know that if she wins her election, she’ll be “fighting” on their behalf in Congress, and on behalf of people whose abusers have not been held accountable. 

“Their experiences are obviously really exceptional and horrific, but abuse and corruption are not,” Hines said. 

Hines is running for a seat in the Detroit suburbs that Trump carried by seven points in 2024, and that is now a prime pickup opportunity for Democrats with incumbent Republican Rep. John James running for governor. Hines is facing Republican Mike Bouchard, an Army veteran and the son of a local sheriff who is running on boosting American manufacturing, border security and opposing “far left policies.” 

In 2021, Hines became chief of the Special Victims Unit and Appeals in the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office, which was responsible for handling cases of sexual abuse. According to her campaign, Hines helped reform interviewing practices for child victims, helped expand a program to prosecute hate crimes against LGBTQ+ victims and led an initiative that prosecuted cold-case sexual assaults. 

“I had a lot of family members who had been survivors of sexual assaults or child sexual abuse, and so I did know that I wanted to be in a place where I could advocate for women and children,” Hines said of her career. 

In Congress, she hopes to continue that work by shedding light on how policy decisions can reduce incidents of violence and sexual assault. Hines, who has young children, said that the country’s lack of affordable childcare can force parents into trusting their children “with someone that they shouldn’t,” leading to abuse. She also pointed to the growing number of sexual abuse cases happening online. 

“As policymakers, we need to be on the front end to stop this abuse,” she said. 

To check your voter registration status or to get more information about how to vote and what’s on your ballot, visit vote.org.

The post These prosecutors saw how the justice system failed women. Now they’re running for Congress appeared first on Salon.com.

Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) failed to answer a question about who won the 2020 election, said tariffs were making trade fair for Georgia manufacturers, and attempted to elicit sympathy for his own family when asked to condemn the white nationalist views held by his son-in-law during the first Georgia-wide U.S. Senate debate on Thursday night.

A Calculated Delay

The Trump Justice Department has mapped out its coming attack on mifepristone — much thirsted for by anti-abortion advocates, but deliberately delayed to avoid midterm backlash — in a new court filing. 

The first step to imposing new restrictions (or reimposing ones previously lifted) is to conduct a “safety review.” Experts often point out that there are few drugs that have been studied and scrutinized as much as mifepristone, making the pretense of discovering some heretofore unknown risk factor fairly absurd.  

“FDA is on track to obtain study results by mid-December 2026,” DOJ wrote of its review. “FDA will then need to review and evaluate/interpret the results and draft a report. FDA expects to complete that process not later than March 2027.” 

The agency will then use those “findings” to justify a change to mifepristone’s REMS — Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy — or restrictions meant to police the use of highly dangerous drugs. Mifepristone’s safety profile has never justified these restrictions, but the anti-abortion movement’s decades of smearing the drug as unsafe has successfully made it harder to get under Republican and Democratic FDAs alike. 

The Biden administration took the largest strides yet in removing some of these barriers. Most importantly, it lifted the in-person dispensing requirement, which has allowed patients even in red states to be prescribed the medicine over telehealth by doctors in blue ones, and receive it in the mail. So far, blue state shield laws have protected those providers from prosecution by red states, though a massive legal reckoning on these state jurisdictional issues is certainly coming. 

That Biden-era REMS change is the crux of a Louisiana lawsuit against the FDA seeking to restrict mifepristone, with the state arguing that allowing the drug to be remotely prescribed and mailed undermines its abortion ban and forces it to expend money on Medicaid patients that have mifepristone-related complications. This week’s filing is part of that lawsuit. Historically, these lawsuits have struggled to amass legitimate examples of such mifepristone-related injuries, and Louisiana’s complaint leans heavily on state sovereignty. 

The DOJ filing stated that the FDA is looking at the in-person dispensing requirement in particular. 

“Following completion of its study and review, FDA will decide whether changes to the Mifepristone REMS Program are necessary and, if applicable, initiate any such changes in accordance with established processes,” it said. “FDA anticipates that it will be able to provide an update to its estimated date of completion as more information becomes known, particularly in March 2027 when it expects to complete its report on the final study results.” 

This filing is as much a signal to the anti-abortion movement as it is an attempt to get Louisiana to cool it until the midterms are safely finished and the FDA can do the dirty work itself. Activists have been outraged at the lack of movement in President Donald Trump’s second term, though they were somewhat assuaged when he nominated Heidi Overton — who has called mifepristone “dangerous to women” and celebrated Dobbs — as the new FDA commissioner. She has not yet received a confirmation vote. 

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

In the run-up to the November election, federal officials have sent conflicting signals about whether law enforcement agents could show up at polling places.

FBI Director Kash Patel declined to rule out deploying FBI agents to voting sites. The Department of Homeland Security has said ICE does not plan to patrol polling places, while leaving open the possibility that agents could respond to threats or serve warrants nearby. The Justice Department, meanwhile, has said it will continue sending federal personnel to polling locations as part of its election-monitoring efforts.

The mixed messages are already shaping preparations around the country: In Wisconsin, election officials are being trained on how to respond if armed federal agents appear at polling places, while in Michigan, the attorney general’s office has prepared agents, state police officials and legal filings to respond quickly to election-related incidents.

The uncertainty has left election officials preparing for scenarios they may never face and voters unsure what federal presence, if any, to expect in November.

A recent University of San Diego poll found that 40% of Americans said they think it’s likely that ICE agents will show up at the polls, and a third said their presence would reduce their trust in elections.

Federal law sharply restricts the deployment of armed federal agents at polling places, and experts say election officials have tools to respond if agents show up in violation of those restrictions.

Federal law prohibits U.S. officials from sending or keeping “troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held,” with only narrow exceptions for when those people are voting or if their presence is necessary “to repel armed enemies of the United States.”

Another federal law prohibits voter intimidation, with up to a yearlong prison sentence for anybody who intimidates, threatens, or coerces somebody else with the purpose of interfering with another person’s right to vote.

“It’s low likelihood, and it’s certainly impossible that any sort of federal presence could be there at every polling site in America,” said Aaron Blacksberg, federal policy counsel at the Institute for Responsive Government. “But without knowing for certain, people are concerned.”

Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Blacksberg said that voters especially worried about the possibility of federal law enforcement at the polls could vote by mail, drop their ballot at a drop box or or use another alternative voting option available in their jurisdiction.

The prohibition on deploying armed federal personnel to polling places is a criminal statute, said Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships for the Campaign Legal Center. “The person who orders the agents or officers to the polls also would face criminal liability for doing that,” he said.

In most jurisdictions, Diaz added, election officials are empowered to remove people from the polls if they’re causing a disruption or violating polling place rules, and they can work with local law enforcement to enforce those rules. If a voter sees federal agents at polling places in a manner that may be illegal, Diaz said, they should alert their local election officials.

Federal agents could also end up near a polling place for reasons unrelated to the election.

That happened in May, when a traffic stop led to a car being pulled over near a polling place, and ICE agents showed up to question the driver. Local law enforcement quickly showed up to tell the federal agents to leave the premises. County officials said voters weren’t questioned and polling places ran normally despite the brief ICE presence nearby.

Courts have confronted voter intimidation before

There’s little precedent for the possibility of federal agents at the polls, but courts have addressed other efforts involving law-enforcement personnel at polling places.

For example, in 1981 the Democratic National Committee took the Republican National Committee to court for allegedly seeking to revoke the registrations of minority voters in New Jersey and enlisting off-duty officers to intimidate voters by standing at the polls in heavily Black and Latino precincts. The Republican Party entered a consent decree that lasted over three decades, heavily restricting its planned election security efforts.

The decree is no longer in effect, but it could be cited in future cases “if something really grotesque were to happen in the area of voter intimidation by people looking like law enforcement” said Lorraine Minnite, a Rutgers University political science professor who served as an expert witness in the case.

She also said voters should feel confident that election officials are prepared to respond to federal interference.

Recent Votebeat reporting illustrates that around the country, top state prosecutors, secretaries of state and local election officials are preparing for scenarios like ICE showing up at the polls and preparing legal filings in advance. Some have rehearsed how to respond if federal agents seek access to polling places, ballots or voting equipment, while others are lining up attorneys and law enforcement who could act quickly.

The prospect of federal agents at polling places is already being litigated.

In September, nine groups filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and several other agencies and officials over statements the groups say amount to threats to deploy federal agents to polling places. The groups argue such a deployment would violate federal law, including a section of the Voting Rights Act that bans voter intimidation. They are seeking an injunction blocking federal agents from being used in ways that unlawfully intimidate voters.

The Justice Department, which is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, has rejected its premise, arguing that federal officials have never said they would send law enforcement to polling locations. The Department of Homeland Security has said ICE is not planning operations targeting polling places. The case is still in its preliminary stages.

Local police have a different role at polling places.

Unlike federal law enforcement, local police routinely coordinate with election officials around polling place security.

In many cases, Diaz said, local law enforcement are at the polls at the request of election officials, who have received extensive harassment and threats since the 2020 election. Law enforcement often coordinates with election officials to keep officials and voters safe without their presence intimidating voters, he said.

“It’s far more normal for a county official or a state official from a law enforcement agency to be at or near the polls because usually they’re working with election officials, versus federal law enforcement, who have no role in the election process,” he said.

But even a lawful local police presence “can raise concerns about voter intimidation.”

In August, the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Department in Wisconsin said they would be sending some deputies to polling locations to ensure a safe and secure election. That drew criticism from the ACLU of Wisconsin and other groups. The sheriff responded that deputies had conducted brief and routine polling place visits for years.

A few days later, legal groups sent the sheriff a letter saying that while local law enforcement can play a helpful role in elections, their presence can intimidate voters — and that intimidation may violate state and federal law.

Even when local law enforcement is working with election officials, officers are subject to the same voter intimidation restrictions as anybody else, Diaz said.

“It’s important for them to behave responsibly and transparently with election officials and with the public to reassure voters that they’ll be able to vote safely,” he said, adding that officers should carefully avoid inadvertently creating an intimidating presence for voters.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

The post What to expect at the polling place amid uncertainty over federal agents appeared first on Salon.com.

We’ve spent our entire political careers in different camps. One of us was a Democratic governor and chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The other served as a conservative Republican in Congress for over a decade, representing a deep-red district in the Indiana heartland that President Donald Trump won in each of his three presidential elections by over 30 points.

But before we got into politics, we were both physicians in internal medicine and cardiothoracic surgery, respectively. We’ve seen firsthand how crucial it is for the patient-provider relationship to guide and determine the right care. And that’s why we’re so alarmed that nearly half of Americans, according to a recent survey by KFF, the independent health organization, now report that their health insurers have delayed or denied coverage for a doctor-recommended treatment within the past two years.

Corporate insurers should not be at the forefront of patient care. Delays and denials put patients’ health at risk. And they often lead to preventable complications and higher long-term spending.

We both believe reforming the health insurance system is a moral and an economic imperative, as do many of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Even in a bitterly divided Congress, we have seen encouraging signs that reform is possible.

In recent months, Democrats and Republicans have worked together to hold insurers accountable — especially when it comes to “prior authorization,” the notorious and widely despised insurer practice of denying certain procedures and treatments unless doctors and patients first obtain permission. In a recent American Medical Association survey, 95% of physicians said they’ve seen prior authorization requirements delay necessary care. Nearly four in five have witnessed patients abandon treatment because of problems with the process.

Leaders in both parties already agree that improvements to the American insurance model are necessary. The bipartisan Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act would move Medicare Advantage prior authorizations to an electronic system and require quicker response times and greater transparency from insurers. Significantly, over 300 House members and 70 senators have cosponsored the legislation. This summer, it cleared two House committees unanimously.

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Lawmakers are also finding common ground on transparency. In July the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced a bipartisan bill that would require health insurers to publicly report how often they deny claims.

That scrutiny is overdue. Medicare Advantage insurers denied more than four million prior authorization requests in 2024.

When patients and their doctors appealed those denials, insurance companies reversed roughly 80% of their initial decisions. That high reversal rate suggests insurers are denying lots of medically appropriate procedures, tests and treatments — and hoping that doctors and patients will be too busy, sick and frustrated to follow through with an appeal.

That’s often a safe, albeit callous, bet. For too many Americans, fighting insurance companies can feel like a battle they cannot win. It often requires tremendous mental and emotional fortitude at a time when they are simply trying to get well. That is why Congress must take on that fight for them. Families already pay extraordinary sums for health coverage — by some measures, the monthly cost of employer-sponsored family health coverage now rivals the typical monthly mortgage payment. And still, these families face denials, delays and difficulty accessing the care and medicines they need.

As physicians, we know that time matters when someone is sick. As a Democrat and a Republican, we also recognize how rare genuine consensus is in Washington. That’s why we’re cautiously hopeful that after the midterms, Congress will seize the opportunity to make prior authorization and broader insurance marketplace reforms a priority.

The post A health reform both parties can get behind appeared first on Salon.com.

I was wrong about Fox News. Or rather, I was wrong about what the network can be useful for.

The conservative media behemoth is celebrating 30 years on the air this week. I have been a loyal, daily viewer for about half that run. I remember the inaugural episodes of “The Five” and “Outnumbered.” Before Marc Lamont Hill was helping elevate the conversation on one of the country’s biggest podcasts, I watched him school Bill O’Reilly as a Fox contributor and Temple University professor. And who can forget Alan Colmes, forever assigned the role of hapless Democrat?

For years, I believed there was no particularly good reason for a serious progressive to go on Fox News. The network touts its “fair and balanced” tagline, but it is not a neutral venue and it does not deserve to be treated like one. Its business model is grievance. A Democrat on Fox is a prop. The network invites them into the studio so its audience can watch them lose. Why submit to the bad faith interruptions and the inevitable social media clip engineered to make the left look elitist or insane? 

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed has made me reconsider that.

The Michigan Democratic Senate candidate has emerged as an anomalous fixture on the conservative network, dominating segments with a cool composure that leaves hosts alternating between hostility and reluctant infatuation. El-Sayed is not merely surviving Fox News hits. He is dominating them, and the hosts know it — and Donald Trump definitely knows it.

The president raged on social media about El-Sayed’s Monday appearance on “The Story with Martha MacCallum” that Fox News spends more time covering “Democrat jihadists” than they do GOP candidates. Trump’s temper tantrums highlight a fundamental structural weakness in contemporary conservatism: Right-wing ideology is inherently hierarchical, predicated on the worship of strength and dominance. When El-Sayed goes onto Fox and refuses to shrink, when he looks a host in the eye and dismantles talking points with data and empathy, it scrambles the entire authoritarian matrix. 

The psychological fallout among the network’s talking heads has been equally telling. Jesse Watters, a stalwart of the network’s macho posturing, has spent weeks gushing over El-Sayed with an almost comical bewilderment. After the Democratic candidate casually skewered his Republican opponent Mike Rogers as a “beta” on air — eliciting an involuntary chuckle from Watters — the Fox host found himself helplessly admitting that he liked the progressive Democrat despite himself.

This is a model for the left — and there is a lineage here. 

Democrats on Fox News used to be cast in a narrow role: the tame liberal who could be invited on to lose politely. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was one of the first politicians on the left who seriously engaged with the network’s audience. He appeared on Fox during his 2016 presidential run and talked directly about wages, healthcare and corporate power. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign proved a Democrat can leave the network Roger Ailes built with their own viral moments. He routinely met a hostile premise with calm facts, a sharp answer and a smile that made the host’s irritation look frivolous. 

El-Sayed is the next stage of that evolution. He adds something that many national Democrats still lack: an understanding that a media hit is not a policy seminar. It is about making the audience see who is in command. El-Sayed has figured out how to talk to the people who love Fox without pretending that the network is something it isn’t.

He refused to let Fox’s presenters dictate the terms of the conversation. In August, El-Sayed sat for a 25-minute one-on-one with Watters, who confronted him with the inventory of right-wing obsessions: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Trump’s war with Iran, transgender athletes and his Muslim faith. Watters wanted to compress El-Sayed into a caricature, a radical leftist Muslim candidate who could be made alien and threatening to the people watching at home.

El-Sayed did not take the bait. When Watters pressed him about abolishing ICE, he did not surrender the moral argument or get stuck in a defensive loop. He pointed out that the U.S. enforced immigration law before ICE’s creation and that the agency’s existence has not solved the problem Watters claimed to care about. 

“We were able to enforce our immigration policies without shooting people in the face and the back of the head,” El-Sayed said, while dodging several of the culture war questions and steering the interview back to healthcare and affordability. When Watters raised surgery for minors in the crudest possible terms, El-Sayed answered by asking whether the host was circumcised. Right-wing influencers howled that it was a nightmare. The clip went viral anyway.

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

El-Sayed’s appearance on Monday with MacCallum was masterful policy communication. The host pressed the candidate on terrorism, the Iran war, Medicare for All and campaign financing, and the two talked over each other at points because El-Sayed kept answering the question behind the question. 

On terrorism, he was unequivocal that the victim is never at fault. Then, he pivoted: “Why are we fighting this war, to what end? Who benefits from it? Why did we do this? What are we paying for it?” 

When MacCollum played a clip of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani defining socialism as everyone having what they need to live a dignified life, and then asked if that disturbed El-Sayed as a capitalist, he dismantled the frame in seconds. “Well, Martha, I assume you went to good public schools.” 

Yes. 

“And you got to drive on good roads today.” 

Pretty much. 

“And when you put your garbage out, somebody comes and picks it up.” 

Yes. 

El-Sayed embodied the most devastating move in American politics: When someone tries to explain socialism to you, explain the socialist parts of the life they already love. MacCallum pressed him on campaign finance and high-profile donors, and El-Sayed did not stutter or retreat. He pivoted to the fundamental reality that ordinary people across the political spectrum despise: the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics.

This connects directly to a deeper truth about the American electorate that corporate-backed consultants consistently fail to grasp. And there is evidence it is landing. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll, El-Sayed outperformed other swing-state Democratic Senate candidates in capturing a vital sliver of 2024 Trump voters, securing 8% compared to paltry single digits elsewhere.

This is not because those voters have suddenly embraced intersectional environmentalism or Medicare for All in its entirety; it is because working-class Americans are profoundly alienated by corporate malfeasance, stagnant wages and the hollow promises of career politicians. When a candidate like El-Sayed — just like Sanders and Buttigieg before him — speaks directly to economic class struggles without patronizing rhetoric, a significant percentage of non-ideological working-class viewers listen. And they recognize the fundamental truth in the critique.

The left does not need to pretend that Fox News has suddenly become fair. It has not. One candidate’s successful appearance does not redeem a network that has fueled racism, conspiracy theories, anti-immigrant panic and the authoritarian politics that brought Trump to power. 

But refusing to appear on Fox News is no longer a tenable position if it merely concedes millions of viewers to an information ecosystem with no meaningful counterargument that can reach them. 

The post Abdul El-Sayed is the Democrat who keeps dominating Fox News appeared first on Salon.com.

How Many of These Guys Are There?

The latest report about far-right extremists in Georgia Republican candidate Mike Collins’ orbit comes from the Daily Beast, which identified two people associated with the far-right group American Patriots USA serving as campaign-appointed “convoy captains” in his bid for Senate. Convoy captains head up grassroots organizing efforts in Georgia’s counties.

American Patriots USA is classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “white nationalist” group, or a group that believes “white identity should be the organizing principle of the countries that make up Western civilization.” It was founded by a Klan leader who attended the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

One of the two convoy captains identified by the Daily Beast served as a state director of American Patriots USA, and the other as a vice president of the group, the outlet reported.

These two are the latest in a long line of extreme far-right figures who have surfaced in Collins’ orbit. Perhaps most notoriously, Collins’ son-in-law was identified by CNN as a white nationalist influencer with millions of followers who has promoted the neo-Nazi group Patriot Front, called for Muslims to be deported from the country, and shared the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews control politics in the U.S. The Washington Post found a former Collins staffer posting a swastika and an image of himself in a Klan robe to Twitter. Slate discovered that Collins’ (now former) chief of staff informed a group chat that included Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer that he was trying to use his influence to spring notorious Holocaust denier and troll Chuck Johnson from prison.

Perhaps — perhaps! — you might be inclined to think Collins is just unlucky, and these guys are turning up all around him by coincidence. But I can’t see these repeated headlines emerge without thinking about Collins’ unique online persona, which includes multiple jokes about killing immigrants through a method far-right Latin American dictators, including Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, were known to deploy against their political enemies: tossing them from aircraft. These “death flights” have become a jokey meme among online extremists, one with which Collins is seemingly very familiar.

“Another week, another scandal for Mike Collins, who is surrounded at work, at home, and now at his campaign by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Klan associates,” Collins’ opponent, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), said of the Daily Beast report, adding that Collins will “have to answer” during tonight’s debate “for his extensive and disqualifying ties to white nationalism.”

Trumpworld Reportedly Looking for a Scapegoat

• Politico informs us that, amid indications of a dismal upcoming midterm election, political operatives around the president are turning on two leading figures in his orbit: Chris LaCivita, one of Trump’s 2024 campaign managers, and James Blair, who served as White House deputy chief of staff. The two now run the pro-Trump Super PAC MAGA, Inc., through which Republicans are routing much of their midterm spending.
• Ironically, the cause of the fracas is that LaCivita and Blair recently spent several days in the Balkans, advising a pro-Putin party in Republika Srpska. The New York Times broke that story earlier this week.
• Trump reportedly isn’t pleased. His problem here, to be clear, is not that the two were helping a pro-Putin political party, but that they were doing so with a month to go before what is expected to be a GOP rout, during a time when they presumably should have had their hands full back in the U.S.
• “I do not have any idea who else they work for but will, on reflection, ask them and, if there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately!” Trump posted to Truth Social yesterday, a reaction to the Times’ reporting that, per Politico, has MAGA world all atwitter.

Tabs

• Don’t miss the Wall Street Journal’s deeply bizarre story about Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle’s insistence that a MAGA donor pay off her American Express card.
• The Trump administration successfully pressured Canada and the EU to drop their sponsorship of a disinformation conference at which one panel would examine the U.S.’s role as a spreader of disinformation, the Guardian reports.

Man of the Hour

It’s Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, about whom Trump recently said, not at all ominously, “We have some big surprises coming up in another few weeks, right Russ?”

“He’s gonna be one of the very important people in the history of our country, in my opinion,” Trump added. “He’s got some great things happening.”

President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to exert control over the Federal Reserve’s economic policy. His primary demand? Cut interest rates. 

Ed Martin Tells All (Sort of)

President Donald Trump is, apparently, being advised on the midterms by former Colorado elections clerk Tina Peters. The two met Monday at the White House.

Peters was convicted in 2024 of a series of state crimes related to a plot to undermine the results of the 2020 election. Colorado’s Democratic governor then commuted her sentence earlier this year amid a pressure campaign by Trump.

After the meeting on Monday, former DOJ official and longtime conservative gadfly Ed Martin helpfully blabbed about what the two discussed, enthusing to the MAGA news outlet Real America’s Voice he was “going to break some news.”

“There is local control,” Martin said of U.S. elections. “However, the laws that govern the system, like safety and national security, are federal laws. So Tina Peters, famous Colorado clerk, was in the Oval Office today just two hours ago talking about this question. The president’s taking it seriously.”

Martin claimed that voting machines are compromised by foreign governments (a familiar, baseless allegation), and suggested that Peters and the president were discussing what he could do about it.

“If the Congress won’t pass the Save America Act, and they won’t, the president’s going to have to do what he’s going to do,” Martin said. “And it’s not a local issue when it’s national security, and it’s clearly national security. So we’ll see how it plays out. But again, four weeks from today, we have an election that has to be safe, has to be secure.”

Martin, of course, is not the most reliable narrator. The Jan. 6 organizer-turned-pardon attorney was ousted from the DOJ after Todd Blanche reportedly became extremely annoyed with his grandstanding. So, though ABC did independently confirm the news of the Trump-Peters meeting, take Martin’s description of what occurred with a grain of salt.

After the meeting, Trump spoke to the press, making seemingly contradictory statements about mail-in voting. “Vote by mail or vote in person. I’d rather have a vote in person. But they can vote by mail if they want, because we seem to have no choice,” he said, adding his usual claim that “there is a lot of cheating in vote by mail.” He did not, however, announce any new, election-related plans.

It’s also not terribly clear from Martin’s description what he and Peters want the president to “do.” Activists in their world have at times tried to pressure Trump to declare a national emergency, and, while that could stoke the chaos in which Trump thrives, experts say it wouldn’t give him any new authority over elections which, as Martin acknowledged, are run by the states.

Everybody’s Thinking About What a Democratic Senate Majority Would Mean for a Supreme Court Vacancy

The big news, as Kate Riga wrote for TPM, came yesterday, with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito insisting to Bloomberg Law that he did not plan to retire in the last months of 2026 should Democrats retake the Senate.

• Ever since both Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas — the furthest right, and oldest, justices on the Court — declined to retire at the end of the Court’s last term, speculation has run rampant about whether they might swiftly step down in late 2026, allowing the White House to work with the Republican-controlled Senate to confirm a similarly right-wing successor before Democrats, potentially, take over.
• Democrats, for their part, are taking a page from Mitch McConnell’s playbook and mulling the possibility of refusing to confirm Trump’s nominee for any opening on the Supreme Court during the last two years of his term. “We’ve got to do exactly what McConnell did to us,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) told NBC, one of several Democrats to express that sentiment.
• Republicans, meanwhile, told Politico they are ready to spring into action, though they doubted they would need to. If a justice has plans to retire, “They would have done it already,” Thune told Politico.

You have questions, we have answers. Since TPM readers are as obsessed with political minutiae as our staffers are, we’re launching a special limited-run bonus version of the pod in this final month before the 2026 midterms. Introducing: the Polltober Show.

On Tuesdays, Josh and Kate will get into the weeds on all things midterms, drawing on questions that you — our lovely readers — will submit! If there’s anything you want to know about specific races, candidates, chamber control, the courts, the polls, whatever, just drop your queries in the YouTube comments on the latest episode of the TPM Show or the Polltober Show itself. Our producer Jackie Wilhelm will scoop them up and pass them on to Josh and Kate to mull over.

Look forward to getting into the weeds with you!

Donald Trump has spent his political life treating the press as a prop. Friendly outlets are the audience he performs for, while hostile ones are the villains he performs against. But the president has never had to confront a prop that has stopped cooperating. It’s why he has spent several days raging at nearly every corner of the media, including the one network he has long treated as his own. Increasingly obsessed with controlling the image of his political decline rather than reckoning with reality, Trump has set out on a campaign of intimidation as his usual spectacle starts to finally fizzle out following more than a decade of domination. But browbeating Fox News and continuing to sideline CNN and POLITICO cannot conceal what is there in plain sight: shrinking crowds and falling poll numbers.

Over a whirlwind weekend of rallies across Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas, the cracks in the MAGA facade became impossible to ignore. Trump has always treated crowd size at his rallies as a proxy for legitimacy and domination. In his eyes, the image of an overflowing arena functions as proof that the country loves him, that the media lies about him and that his political project remains invincible. This is why the sight of empty seats in high school gymnasiums and muted cable coverage that tell a less flattering story cuts so deeply. 

“In actuality, my Events for very good Republican Politicians are probably more crowded than ever. There are no empty seats, there haven’t been for years, and there never will be. The Rallies are ‘HOTTER’ than ever,” he wrote on Truth Social Monday, demanding that “The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty.” The president was referencing a Times report that during an event on Friday, Trump’s venue on the campus of the University of South Alabama was not full and that Trump’s midterm campaign swing feels “more like a farewell tour.”

But the day before, Trump had turned his fire on a less obvious target.

“Sad to see that Fox & Friends (Sunday) is not covering our packed house and incredibly enthusiastic (beyond!) Rally that took place in Ohio last night, or the ones in Alabama, Texas, or Oklahoma over the past two days,” he posted on Truth Social Sunday morning. The rallies were “absolutely phenomenal, better than ever,” he insisted. “Our people want to see our Rallies, and reports on our Rallies, on FoxNews, or they will very quickly stop watching (like I am doing right now!).”

It was the second time in five days Trump had attacked the conservative media powerhouse by name, and this time he brought a hit list. He accused Fox of forcing Democrats down MAGA’s throats and demanded to know who fired “the great Maria Bartiromo,” the ex-host who reportedly shared internal network communications with the administration. “Who makes these decisions at FoxNews?” Trump asked, before demanding the network cover his “happenings” or soon have the ratings of “FAKE NEWS CNN or MSNOW,” because “Fox tried this act once before, and almost went out of business (and always right before an election!). That can happen again!” 

But Fox had already covered the Ohio rally before Trump posted his tirade. A Snapstream search found that “Fox and Friends Weekend” aired a segment on his event supporting Senate hopeful Jon Husted and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in Vandalia shortly before Trump’s post, focusing on his data center comments. Significantly, though, the network’s pattern across the four-state swing shows that hosts tease the president’s speeches, throw to a live correspondent report, but rarely air the rally live. While Fox didn’t air Trump’s Ohio speech live, it ran a report at the top of the hour and showed Ramaswamy warming up the crowd. The network did the same in Alabama on Friday, and in North Carolina last month. 

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

There are exceptions. Sean Hannity cut into his show on Thursday and aired 36 uninterrupted minutes from Oklahoma. But the usual approach is no secret — and it didn’t start this weekend. Tellingly, after Trump’s attacks, Fox opened “The Five” and “The Will Cain Show” on Monday with rally clips. 

The president has been escalating his rhetoric against the network for months. In April, he told Fox executives to “take Jessica Tarlov off the air.” He has also gone after hosts Bret Baier and Shannon Bream, complaining that the latter failed to challenge a Democratic congressman on her Sunday program. As CNN’s Brian Stelter noted, Fox has calculated that Trump’s rallies — which are long, repetitive and rarely produce news — are “not a ratings magnet right now.” The Republican National Committee’s midterm convention in Texas apparently was not either, meriting just one segment on “The Five” per day; most speakers were never shown on the network. Ironically, the unprecedented spectacle resulted in a rare reverse bounce that left Trump’s net approval declining and the Democrats’ advantage on the generic ballot increasing. 

When CNN’s Kristen Holmes asked Trump about the NBC News/Telemundo poll that found his approval with Latino voters at just 27% on Monday, he cut her off, “You’re fake news! You’re CNN. You’re fake news. My poll numbers are great, and all you have to do is look at the crowds we’re drawing.” Days before, he delivered a characteristically crude address that singled out CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins in front of a hostile crowd, eliciting angry boos and vicious chants. Trump’s media strategy depends on collapsing every unfavorable fact into the same category: enemy propaganda.

The administration’s treatment of CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO made that purpose impossible for even the White House press corps to ignore. On Monday, the White House barred POLITICO from traveling aboard Air Force One, preventing the outlet from fulfilling its role in the presidential press pool, having been scheduled to serve as the print representative. Trump has already kicked CNN out of the television pool on the plane, replacing it with friendly outlets including LindellTV and Real America’s Voice. 

The legal fight over that control comes to a head Thursday, when Trump-appointed federal Judge Timothy J. Kelly is scheduled to hear arguments on whether to extend the block on the president’s ban of CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO from the White House. Last month, Kelly issued a temporary restraining order requiring the administration to restore the outlets’ credentials, rejecting, at least at that stage, the administration’s national security rationale for yanking access.

The Justice Department nevertheless asked the court late Friday to permit the ban’s reinstatement, suggesting in the government’s filing that “bona fide journalists would identify sources instead of relying on anonymous sources.” This reasoning is especially rich, coming from a White House that routinely briefs reporters on background, requiring them to grant anonymity under its own ground rules. One “reporting incident” cited against POLITICO was a June story quoting a “senior administration official” — exactly the arrangement the White House demanded. 

From the courtroom to Truth Social, Trump’s increasingly unhinged media attacks expose a serious weakness in his political model. He is a president with nothing to sell. But he needs constant confirmation that his movement is growing. When even Fox News declines to provide uninterrupted validation, the illusion becomes harder to sustain.

The American public is increasingly seeing through MAGA’s smoke and mirrors. Ultimately, no amount of bullying, executive bans or early morning social media rants can paper over the fact that one month before the midterm elections, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added six more candidates to its “Red to Blue” list this week, districts Trump won by an average of 16 points or more in 2024.

The post Trump lashes out at Fox News as MAGA rally crowds shrink appeared first on Salon.com.

Welcome, Thom, to the Senate ‘Oops’ Caucus

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) has a book to promote. In it, he revealed this week, he delves into his greatest regret: voting to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“The president referred to Pete Hegseth as right out of Central Casting — and I agree with that: He’s an actor. He’s not a manager,” Tillis told MS NOW’s Morning Joe.

This confession comes with a hint of déjà vu. An outgoing senator with a brand as a moderate — at least within the spectrum of today’s Republican Party — regrets a pivotal confirmation vote. Perhaps it brings to mind Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the doctor-turned-legislator who, despite his reservations, confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead Health and Human Services. Kennedy then immediately broke promises Cassidy said he had made to him, and began acting on his life’s work to undercut the vaccine regimen in America. Who could have seen it coming?

Emine Yücel has a piece out at TPM this morning about another potential member of the “Oops” Caucus in the making: Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) who, now that she is locked in a tight reelection fight, is outspokenly critical of White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought. Vought’s manifold creative ways to impound congressionally appropriated funds — seen by many experts as indicative of a veritable constitutional crisis — is, of course, a slap in the face of the Senate Appropriations Committee Chair, Collins.

But Collins voted to confirm Vought. Vought was confirmed by all 53 Republican senators. All Democrats voted against him.

As Emine details, Vought’s views, at the time of that vote, were clear. During Trump’s 2024 campaign, Vought, now famously, was caught on tape saying of government agencies, “we want their funding to be shut down.” “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said.

He did not hide these views during his confirmation hearing, during which he said he believed the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, passed to rein in the Nixon administration’s refusal to spend congressionally appropriated funds, was unconstitutional. Collins voted for him after all this was public. Collins’ office did not answer Emine when asked whether the senator regrets her vote.

These “Oops” Caucus stories share a few factors: a senator viewed by much of the media as more reasonable or centrist than their colleagues, and a Trump administration figure taking actions that are exactly in line with who they were publicly known to be. Is it believable that Kennedy, America’s leading vaccine skeptic, would choose not to act on those beliefs once in government? Is it believable that Vought, who declared his intent to starve the government of funds, would then not do so once confirmed? Is it reasonable to believe that a weekend Fox News host, known for his extreme Christian views and lack of personal control, would undergo a total transformation once given authority over the most powerful military in the world?

Tillis’ support for Hegseth was particularly egregious given that he initially urged key witnesses to come forward against the nominee, suggesting that, if they did, the nomination would fail. As the Wall Street Journal reported in January 2025:

Tillis personally assured Danielle Hegseth in a call on Jan. 19, witnessed by two other people, that if she signed the statement testifying that she believed her former brother-in-law Pete Hegseth has an alcohol-abuse problem and was abusive to his second wife, it would carry weight, and potentially move three votes—his own, along with the votes of Sens. Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska), those people said.

Danielle Hegseth did as Tillis asked. Tillis nonetheless cast the deciding vote to confirm Hegseth.

It takes 51 votes to confirm a member of the administration in the Senate, and in many cases, a two-thirds majority — 67 votes — to remove one. Once these people are in, they are in. The time to examine their records closely is before they are confirmed, not after. The “Oops” Caucus is made up of veterans of the Senate who know how this works. Keep that in mind when assessing their second thoughts.

To his (limited) credit, Tillis goes some way toward capturing the situation in his book, confessing that his and similar senators’ failure to do the job they were elected to do came from the fear of losing it.

“I know for a fact that there are others like me,” he writes, “Republicans who agreed to go along with the early demands of the Trump team no matter how ridiculous they were, believing that failing to do so would mean the end of their political career, and who now see that things have gone way too far.”

Trump Says He’ll Pay for Those ‘Government-Funded’ Campaign Ads After All

A rare climb-down from the commander in chief.

• The news came in a Truth Social post: “The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money.” He claimed (falsely) that this is “a rather standard thing to do” but said he would now “pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.,” a Super PAC.
• The U.S. government has spent more than $10 million on these ads, the New York Times reports. The money came from funding appropriated for the Department of Homeland Security.
• The ads appear to violate a provision of the 2026 appropriations law saying money can’t be used for “propaganda.” The new arrangement likely violates the law as well: The Campaign Legal Center, a good government group, has filed a complaint with the FEC over Trump’s claims to control MAGA Inc.’s money — Super PACs are supposed to be independent of the politicians they support. But the FEC is nonfunctional, with four of six commissioner seats vacant, and nothing is likely to happen.

Georgia Election Board Employee Allegedly Goes Rogue, Requests Federal Intervention

Last week, a letter surfaced from the Georgia Election Board, signed by board executive director James Mills, requesting that the federal government intervene in his state’s election. Addressed to attorney general Todd Blanche and cc-ing Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, the letter asked that the agencies get involved with and oversee numerous aspects of Georgia’s 2026 election.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office denounced the letter. “People who are serious about election security don’t inject chaos in the eleventh hour,” a Raffensperger spokesperson told MS NOW.

Then, over the weekend, the story got weirder: Members of the state election board alleged that Mills never was authorized by the board to send the letter, and was essentially using his position to freelance ahead of the election.

“We have no control over our executive director, and he does whatever the hell he wants to,” the chair of the board, John Fervier, told reporter Jessica Huseman, who broke that aspect of the story for Votebeat.

The five-member Georgia Election Board, readers may remember, was restructured in 2023 to provide Republicans with a significant majority. President Trump has praised various members of that majority, who have entertained conspiracy theories about the way in which the state conducts its elections. A year before the DOJ launched its own investigation of the 2020 election in Fulton County, the Georgia Election Board ordered one.

Fervier, the chair who accused Mills of freelancing, is a Republican but has frequently clashed with his three Republican colleagues on the board and instead voted with its sole Democrat. He’s also clashed — sometimes very publicly — with Mills, who was hired by the board but is not on the board.

Another Republican member of the board also expressed displeasure with Mills to Votebeat’s Huseman, saying that, though this letter may have been inspired by a resolution the board voted on that urged Raffensperger’s office to begin software updates for voting machines and empowered Mills to seek federal help around those updates, Mills’ requests to the DOJ and DHS went far beyond that. That member, Salleigh Grubbs, also said board members were not given a chance to review Mills’ letter.

“In private enterprise, if I told an employee I wanted to see something before it goes and he did this, we’d be having a very different conversation,” Grubbs said. “I thought we were all on the same team.”

This mess is kind of funny, but also very serious. More broadly, this is the kind of thing we should expect heading into the midterms — an official, and perhaps not even an important official, acting on their own to encourage the Trump administration to get involved in an election and take sweeping action. The DOJ and DHS have not yet responded in any public way to Mills, but the administration has valorized similar figures who have gone rogue, such as former Mesa County, Colorado Clerk Tina Peters. Requests like Mills’ give the DOJ material to spin into whatever narrative it wants.

Bolsonaro’s Son Is on the Cusp of Becoming Brazil’s President

Flavio Bolsonaro, son of Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro, came in first place in the country’s presidential election Sunday with 47% of the vote, beating President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had 45%. Because neither candidate cleared 50%, the race will now go to a runoff on Oct. 25.

• Jair Bolsonaro, of course, was at the center of a Jan. 6-like auto-coup attempt after Lula beat him in 2022. The younger Bolsonaro has framed his campaign around revenge for his father and his associates, who were handed jail sentences.
• The right has been ascendant in Latin America, with reactionary candidates winning several elections in a row. Many explicitly align themselves with Donald Trump.
• Runoff systems, such as the one in Brazil, have sometimes blunted the rise of far-right factions. I’ll be watching to see if that happens here.
• Brazil is often compared to America in that it more successfully addressed a very similar auto-coup, prosecuting the former president behind it. Should Flavio Bolsonaro win election, that contrast will become less clear cut.